She seemed stunned by this harmless announcement; and I deemed it prudent to offer her a bribe of some kind. The simplest plan was to promise to pay her well for any trifle we took.
“Het is een kleinigheid,” I told her—“niets dan een kleinigheid. Maar ik zal het je betaald zetten.”
That loosened her tongue. Her natural fluency asserted itself and appeared to fine advantage. But she was so needlessly excited that I knew there must be a misunderstanding somewhere. Accordingly to remove all haziness I just indicated that she had failed to grasp my meaning. The idiom for this I fortunately recollected. You don’t quite follow was one of those choice specimens of local colour that, by frequent repetition, I had thoroughly imprinted on my memory.
YOU DON’T QUITE FOLLOW.
“Duizendmaal verschooning,” I said heartily, “bent U soms niet goed snik?”
The effect of this well meant apology was electrical. The woman really became very rude. She got pale and grabbed at a chair. As we withdrew unostentatiously, we noticed her springing in our direction and talking. It was the most fluent talk I had yet heard in Dutch. She did not hesitate one instant for gender, number, or case. It rained, hailed and stormed terrible words—werkwoorden, voorzetsels, and especially tusschenwerpsels.
Terence and I ran.
On reaching safety outside Terence asked me: “What was she angry about?”
“Oh,” I answered, “as likely as not it’s something out of the grammar. I believe I didn’t use the right idiom. You have to be very particular about these things, you see.
I said vragen voor een boterham, I think; and it should be vragen om. Still she made far too big a fuss over it: and I’d tell her so, if I could.”